Reliance JioPhone beats Samsung to be No. 1 in the Indian feature phones market

NEW DELHI, INDIA: With more than five-fold groth in the shipments, Reliance JioPhone has emerged as the clear market leader in 4Q with 27% market share in the feature phones category, followed by Samsung with 14% market share, according to a CMR report released today.

The feature phone market witnessed a 36% sequential growth in 4Q 2017, and YoY growth of 62%, while the smartphone market recorded a 19% sequential decline in 4Q 2017, with 30 million units shipped.

In smartphones, Xiaomi emerged as the market leader with 25% market share, followed by Samsung with 23% market share.

Overall, Samsung remained the leader for 2017 with 21% market share, followed by iTel, and Xiaomi with 9% market share each.

Mobile handset vendors shipped a 88 million mobile handset units in 4Q 2017. For the entire year, mobile handset vendors have shipped around 287 million mobile handset units in India. Prabhu Ram, Head – Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CMR said, “Traditionally, December is a lean period. However, 4Q 2017 bucked this trend. From the throes of demonetization at the beginning of 2017, the India mobile handset market touched a new historic high in 4Q 2017. If one were to look at historic trends, the India mobile handset market usually sees high refresh cycles in May-June, coinciding with the college admission season, and in September-October, owing to the festive season.”

“2017 was remarkable with certain pioneering mobile handset brands like HTC, Asus and Gionee, among others, seeing worrisome warning signals, while a new breed of exciting handset brands, like Comio and NUU Mobile, among others, came to the fore. We believe this trend will deepen further in 2018,” added Prabhu.